Skill System Review

Captain's Blog Stardate 93771.78

As promised, here is my review of the Skill System revamp. I don't plan on going into too much detail on how the skills affect various things in the game, but I do want to give you a good idea of what to expect if you haven't tried it yet. If you have, feel free to give your feedback in the comments.

The first thing to notice is that the skill tree is divided into Engineering, Science, and Tactical. Anyone can spend skill points in any of these areas. For space you have a total of 46 skill points. Each skill uses one point. If you want to max out a career you will need 28 points.

Why would you want to max out a career? Each career track has unlocks. After spending 2, 7, 12, and 17 skill points you'll unlock bridge officer abilities that you can create in the R&D system. The other unlocks are two additional skills that you'll need to choose between. Finally after spending 25, 26, 27, and 28 points you'll have access to some ultimate skills. You can have all of the ultimate skills but you'll need to spend a total of 28 points.

For ground you'll only have 10 points and a single track. The unlocks along this track are just additional skills. Similar to space, you'll have to choose between two skills at each unlock. Since there is only one track, you'll be able to access all of the unlocks. In space, you'll only be able to fully unlock one track.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about the skills. What's nice about them is the description. Not only does it tell you what the skill does, but it also tells you exactly what kind of bonus you get from it. What I also like is that you no longer need to spend multiple points in a single skill. You spend one point and you get the full benefit of that skill.

Overall the skills are mostly the same. As mentioned above, some are now unlockables. Honestly, this is both a pro and a con. Some skills that you may really want might be out of your reach if you're not willing to spend enough points in that career track. Perhaps what Cryptic should have done was provide all of the additional skills as a potential unlock at each stage. Then you just have to choose one out of the list. You'll still have a total of four additional skills, but at least you can choose which ones to use.

I do think this system is much better. What makes it better is the simplicity. Star Trek Online is a very complex game to begin with so having one of it's systems simplified is a plus. I do predict that players will need an adjustment period, especially those who have spent hours studying the current skill tree.

Hmm I havent really havent gotten to try out the new system just yet, been away on a hiatus for some time, so I fear I will be one of those that will whine and moan and in the end, deciding it's probably for the better all round, well here goes to see how it works for a lil casual player like me.

After playing around with the skill tree for roughly 8+ hours and using this handy thread for references:
https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comments/46n12a/official_unofficial_skill_system_revamp_thread/?sort=top&limit=500

I have to say the new system is simplified and easy to understand for both New and Vets of STO to understand. I would recommend to all who are going to mess around with this to at least hop over to Tribble while it's still up to get your general skill set up idea up so that way you can have some pre-prep for when in launches as I can see some who may not like the end setup and might need to respec a few times to get it right.

One thing I was curious about was the 46 skill cap for space. 10 for ground seems fair, but the cap for space would make sense if you stopped at 50 like the old model did. Plus that'd give folks a lot more options in the long run

I have a question. Is it possible, for this site, where we construct a starship build and once it is completed, we could hit a button, for example, "Suggested Skills Tree", that would then give us a completed skill tree that would fit the build we just completed. Sort of like the gaming computer sites where you input what you like and the site then gives you recomendations based on what you input. Now, if this is already being done somewhere please tell me where.